Watching and listening to The Marcus King Band onstage, your feet are stuck to the floor, your eyes entranced and fixated on the whirlwind jam conspiring before you. Razor-sharp guitar licks, thundering drum-n-bass hooks, twinkle-toed keyboards and a ferocious horn section — a seamless blend of as many musical genres as there are possibilities.

For guitarist Joe Taylor, his lifelong passion and career as a musician is one that finds itself at the crossroads of emotional purity and technical aptitude. With the melodic prowess akin to the likes of Jeff Beck, Bill Frisell or Steve Vai, the six-string ace has come a long way from his South Carolina roots.

At three years old, Seth Taylor picked up his first guitar. Seeing musicians on television and hearing them on the radio sparked something inside of the Bryson City native. Once that instrument was in his hands, it was like two magnets connecting, where it would take all your might to pull them apart.

This Must Be the Place

The solidarity was evident. Sitting onstage this past Monday at Nantahala Brewing in Bryson City, I conducted another episode of “Smoky Mountain Voices,” where local characters and officials are interviewed during an extended face-to-face conversation. It’s in an effort to learn more about the people…

Reading Room

While it is difficult to write objectively yet critically about someone whom you know personally or about a book whose subject matter and/or authors are familiar, sometimes necessity is more than the mother of invention and you have to do things you normally or ethically…